JOINT BASE MCGUIRE-DIX-LAKEHURST, N.J. -- Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division (NAWCAD) Lakehurst team members received recognition during the 2020 Naval Innovative Science & Engineering (NISE) Outstanding Project of the Year Awards April 7, for the successful technological advancement of the Integrated Launch and Recovery Television Surveillance (ILARTS) System.
The ILARTS is used for situational awareness, incident investigations, and aircraft lineup and recovery operations on board aircraft carriers. Due to the low resolution of the legacy ILARTS panoramic cameras and degraded video produced during inclement weather, the fleet communicated the need for better visibility.
“This is the perfect example of taking fleet feedback and finding a solution,” said Kathleen Donnelly, NAWCAD Lakehurst executive director. “The team’s work to improve the efficiency of ILARTs will provide our Sailors with more efficient visuals on board aircraft carriers. With this award, we commend the team’s hard work and dedication.”
In order to meet the needs of the fleet, the NAWCAD Lakehurst team applied high resolution video processing to the new Digital ILARTS Panoramic Display System as a way to increase clarity and situational awareness.
The algorithms and Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) processing developed under the NISE High Resolution Video Processing project have transitioned into the new Digital ILARTS Panoramic Display Software. The resulting digital ILARTS Program of Record (PoR) is capable of processing four 4K cameras in real time and has 1250% greater pixel processing power than the legacy panoramic system.
The project also delivered two machine learning models, which can be used to automatically detect categorized inclement weather with high fidelity.
“The brilliant minds of this team far exceeded what I expected to produce with this project for the Digital ILARTS,” said Matt Cusick, NAWCAD Lakehurst digital ILARTS software lead. “The fleet will realize the benefits of a High Resolution Panoramic Display Processor and we have two successful Machine Learning weather detection models standing by for future integration when scope and resources allow for it.”
For their efforts, Cusick and his team members Dr. James Hing, Larry Venetsky, Jack LoCasto, Ragini Sridhar, David Yurkanin, Phil Baldoni, Gurpreet Singh and Ralph Smith, were awarded NISE Outstanding Project of the Year in Workforce Development Strategic Growth.